Performing and knowing. Experimental and sensory approaches

Joint event Centre Alexandre-Koyré & Maison Française d’Oxford.

Convenors: Charlotte Bigg (CNRS, CAK), Rafael Mandressi (CNRS, CAK) and Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS, CAK / MFO).

Performance and reenactment have been employed as a method of research in the history of science for several decades. This workshop aims to take stock of this work and to reflect upon the value and challenges of these approaches today, in particular relation to historians' renewed interest in materiality and sensuality. The workshop also seeks to replace this work and thinking within broader contexts. The long history of performing knowledge as part, e.g. of teaching and popularization, but also accross the sciences: not all sciences stress the value or necessity of replicating experiments or observations. How does history of science and technology further compare with other fields such as archeology, anthropology or theatre and performance studies that each understand and use performance in slightly different manners; what can historians learn from other approaches?

Programme

9:45. Welcome

10:00

Performances and mediality

Chair & Introduction Charlotte Bigg (Paris, CAK)

10:15. Sarah Dellmann (Utrecht, Uni)
What we learned from “creative re-use” activities in the A Million Pictures project

11:00. Erika Wicky (Liège, Uni)
The Olfactory Art in the Age of Reproduction

11h30 Coffee break

11:45

Performing as a tool in teaching and outreach (round table)

Stephen Johnson (Oxford, Museum of the history of science):
The museum as performance: re-engaging research with the display of science

Simon Werrett (London, UCL)
Fireworks Fit For A Queen? Restaging Early Modern Fireworks for TV

1:30 Break (lunch)

2:30

Performing as object and method of research

Chair & Introduction, Marie Thébaud-Sorger (Oxford, MFO)

2:45  Sigrid Leyssen (Paris, CAK)
On Action Perspectives and Re-Animation. Exploring Ways to study the history of perception

3:30 Melissa van Drie (Cambridge)
Reshaping the ear, taking the voice in hand: the actor and the phonograph.

+ Experiments with phonograph with Dr. Aleks Kolkowski (tbc)

4 : 30 Tea break

5:45 Rafael Mandressi (Paris, CAK)
Foreign dances, foreign bodies: Parisian embodiments of the tango in the early 20th Century

5:15 Ludovic Coupaye (London, UCL)
Old Pots and Good Soups: Return Towards an Anthropology of Techniques.)

6:00 Final Discussion